Authored by Lise Dahl Arvedsen
Abstract
In the literature, leadership configuration is typically presented as a dichotomy between position (a formal hierarchical leader) and process (emergent leadership). This paper argues that this dichotomy is ontologically problematic and empirically simplistic. Drawing on conversation analysis, this paper analyzes situated interactional data to show that explicit local roles can be mobilized by subordinates as a resource in the leadership process. As such, this paper
demonstrates that explicit local role assignment goes beyond hierarchical institutional structures and enables a situated leadership configuration.
Introduction
In a globalized world teams collaborate across departments, companies, and national borders.
For each new collaboration the tasks vary, the expectations differ, and the constellation of participant skills, experience, and norms is unique. COVID-19 has further accelerated this type of collaboration, throwing the world into a new reality calling for increased virtual
collaboration. In other words, the virtual context is becoming an increasingly regular work context, albeit, a complex context, which calls for leadership. The mediated interaction complicates transparency as to whom holds the rights and obligations to, for example, decide upon future actions, which could be considered a leadership task. In some virtual meetings, it might be the formally appointed hierarchical leader who influences subordinates throughout the meeting. In other meetings, no one such person might be present. This leaves peers to subtly negotiate through emergent processes and collaboratively influence each other and produce a future direction, and as such accomplish leadership. Then, there might be meeting situations in which a formal hierarchical leader may possibly be present, but still have subordinates engage in the leadership processes.
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The scholarly literature points to how various leadership configurations, such as shared, distributed, and relational leadership (referred to as plural forms of leadership (Denis et al., 2012)), might accommodate some of the complexities of today’s leadership expectations. Al-ani et al. (2011) identify the importance of the hierarchical, formally appointed leader in virtual collaboration, arguing that this person plays an important role in structuring the group’s tasks and processes. At the same time, studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between team performance and processes and shared leadership (Eisenberg et al., 2016; Hoch et al., 2010;
Wang et al., 2014). How this variety of pluralistic approaches to leadership are configured needs further deciphering (Fairhurst et al., 2020). In the present article leadership configuration is understood as “the unit of leadership analysis … or pattern of relationships” (Gronn, 2009: 390).
Studies focusing on leadership configuration assume a priori that a certain dichotomy exists in the leadership configuration. On the one hand, leadership emanates from the formally appointed leader in a hierarchical superior position (what Holm and Fairhurst (2018) refer to as vertical leadership) and, on the other, leadership can derive from an emergent and organic unstructured process involving subordinates (Fairhurst et al., 2020; Gronn, 2009). Ontologically speaking, leadership based on “a position” and leadership based on “a process” are two different things (Grint, 2005a). Zooming in on the process within the interaction, it makes sense to instead look at the formal roles that interlocutors orient towards within the interaction.
This paper shows that leadership configuration is influenced by explicit local role assignment, as well as hierarchical roles and emergent, organic unstructured processes. Local roles, such as that of the chair, are explicit in the sense that, within a specific situation and context, they are
endowed with certain rights and obligations that are known and related to within the situation.
These rights and obligations can then be mobilized in the leadership process. The virtual context focuses the analysis by deciphering the interactional nuances as the interactional cues are limited to that of what the information and communication technology (ICT) mediates in between the interlocutors. In the conversation analysis (CA) of interaction in a virtual context, I illustrate situations in which leadership is configured based on subordinates appointed as chair, who then act as influencers, although team managers are present as well. The subordinates are explicitly and locally assigned the role of chair and mobilize the stable, visible role of chair as they, in situ, influence the team. The implication of this finding is that the leadership configuration is to be understood as complex, in the sense that it is situated and influenced by explicit local role
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assignment, rather than as a dichotomous configuration between either a formally appointed hierarchical leader and an emergent leadership process involving subordinates.
This article is structured as follows: First, I present the literature review, which focuses on leadership configuration, leadership in interaction, and the virtual context. Next, I describe the methodology used, together with a short introduction to my data. Third, I present the analysis, which is based on two data extracts. Fourth, I provide the findings from the analysis in my discussion and, finally, I present the conclusion, which includes a description of the implications and suggestions for further research.
Literature Review
This study seeks to understand how leadership is configurated. Focusing on explicit local role assignment as a means to structure collective leadership, I will review the notion of leadership configuration and argue that by segregating explicit local roles (e.g., chair) from the position (e.g., formally appointed hierarchical leader) permits a nuanced understanding of leadership.
Following this, I will examine the notion of leadership in interaction to shed light on leadership as it unfolds in the interaction. Finally, I will touch upon the virtual context in which this study takes place.
Configurating leadership
The focus in recent decades on plural perspectives on leadership (Denis et al., 2012) emphasizes a shift in the understanding of leadership from something a person does to others, towards something that is collectively accomplished. Notions such as shared leadership (Pearce et al., 2008), distributed leadership (Bolden, 2011), and relational leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006) all point to the importance of recognizing the involvement of subordinates in the leadership process. Combined, these streams of research orient towards leadership as a collective
accomplishment, where leadership emanates not just from a manager but also from subordinates in a variety of constellations (e.g., manager and subordinates together, or two or more
subordinates). To understand how these constellations are produced and accomplished, scholars frame this as a unit of analysis, denoting it as a leadership configuration (Chreim, 2015; Gronn, 2009; Holm and Fairhurst, 2018).
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The notion of configurating leadership is relevant in the discussion as to how we can understand and strike a balance between leadership emanating from formally appointed hierarchical leaders and from subordinates. Leadership configuration is an “accurate description of situational practice that includes both individual leaders and holistic leadership units working in tandem”
(Gronn, 2009: 384). This is supported by Holm and Fairhurst (2018: 715), who argue in support of a shared hierarchical leadership configuration based on their empirical findings, asserting that
“team members wanted a stronger hierarchical presence” as a mean to organize extensive participation by team members. They portray leadership configuration as a dichotomy, as they argue how leadership configuration is a matter of establishing the right balance between vertical leadership and the more informal, emergent, and collective leadership processes.
Specifically, vertical leadership (Holm and Fairhurst, 2018) is portrayed as structured and formal in the sense that leadership is linked to a position (Grint, 2005a). Vertical leadership is argued to help “contain the excess of too much participation” (Holm and Fairhurst, 2018: 715).
Al-Ani et al. (2011) argue that the formally appointed hierarchical leader plays an important role in structuring the group’s tasks and processes in distributed teams. Locke (2003), who points to a number of leadership tasks that are inherent to the hierarchical managerial role, argues that the role cannot be shared and thus points towards the importance of what he denotes as vertical leadership. Scholars are, as such, attaching the notion of vertical leadership to the individual’s hierarchical position and the power that comes with this position (Pearce and Conger, 2003).
Consequently, vertical leadership is presented as structured, formalized, and organized, and most importantly, as closely related to the hierarchical managerial role. The problem is that, as Tost, Larrick and Gino (2013) argue, the formally appointed hierarchical leader can have a negative impact on team performance because the formally appointed leader’s verbal dominance can reduce team communication and consequently diminish performance. The vertical leader, these scholars argue, has an important role in leadership configuration, but too much
involvement may simultaneously have negative consequences for team performance. As such, leadership emanating from subordinates is relevant for the leadership configuration as well.
Collective leadership (Fairhurst et al., 2020), which is contrasted to vertical leadership, is portrayed as emergent, informal, and unstructured (Hoch and Dulebohn, 2017). One version of collective leadership, shared leadership, is described as messy, spontaneous, and in need of containment by the formally appointed hierarchical leader (Holm and Fairhurst, 2018).
Described as intertwining and interdependent (Pearce and Conger, 2003), shared leadership is
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viewed as coexisting with vertical leadership (Wassenaar and Pearce, 2017), which, as such, supports the argument that a vertical leader has an important function in attending to excessive subordinate participation. Hoch and Dulebohn (2017: 678) argue that subordinates can emerge as “informal leaders inside the team”. As such, the dichotomous understanding of the leadership configuration only allows an a priori understanding of leadership that involves subordinates as emergent, unstructured influencers.
The problem with this dichotomous understanding of the leadership configuration is that the opposing sides represent different ontological perspectives. In the existing dichotomous perspective, vertical leadership is understood based on the position, i.e., a (managerial) leader, and on collective leadership as a process (Grint, 2005a). If leadership is to be understood as an interpersonal influence process (Larsson and Lundholm, 2010), it prompts an understanding of leadership as a social and processual phenomenon (Clifton, 2012). This means that it is
constructed in between interlocutors (Clifton et al., 2020; Larsson, 2017) on the basis of an asymmetrical relationship between an influencer(s) and those who are influenced. Ontologically, treating leadership as a process prompts an understanding of formal roles based on how they are mobilized within the interaction. Thus, though formally appointed hierarchical leaders are probably more likely to be the influencer, we should not, as scholars, assume this a priori.
Towards a situated leadership configuration
Engaging with leadership configuration as a social phenomenon is a matter of looking at the process rather than the position. This can be achieved by closely considering the interaction, which contains various roles that are enacted and accomplished (Angouri and Marra, 2010) as interlocuters orient to them as being relevant. Housley (1999) argues that roles, such as that of chair, can be considered as resources for interlocutors. Roles may represent rights and
obligations that can be mobilized in the leadership process, and it is possible to assign them to, for example, subordinates. Housley draws on Hilbert (1981) when explaining that roles should be understood as an organizing concept that actors draw upon in social settings. As such, a role is not a specific behavior, but rather represent “conceptual resources actors use to clear up confusion, sanction troublemakers, instruct others in the ways of the world, and so forth … Hilbert 1981:216)” (Housley, 1999: 1).
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Roles with rights and obligations can be based on institutional structures, such as the formally appointed hierarchical leader, while other roles are explicitly locally assigned and constituted, for example, that of meeting chair. The existing dichotomous understanding of the leadership configuration contains the risk of excluding the possibility of assigning explicit local roles to team members, i.e. ones that can be mobilized in the leadership process. I argue that assigning roles, such as that of chair, works to strike a balance between excessive leader focus and excessive fluid and emergent negotiation of leadership, and that distributing the role of chair is one way to mobilize and facilitate engagement in the leadership process. Being assigned with an explicit local role is not leadership in itself; however, being ascribed an explicit local role can be a way to engage subordinates in the collaborative process and interactional accomplishment of the leadership process. A more complex role configuration enables, but does not determine, a situated leadership configuration.
Leadership in interaction
Situated leadership configuration can be closely scrutinized using leadership in interaction, an emerging field of leadership that allows an in-depth examination of the leadership process (Larsson, 2017; Schnurr and Schroeder, 2019). Within this strand of research, studies draw on methods such as CA, interactional sociolinguistics, and similar approaches in which situated data is used to explore how leadership is produced and accomplished as part of an ongoing work interaction (Arvedsen and Hassert, 2020; Clifton, 2009; Van De Mieroop et al., 2020). This approach directs attention towards practical work interaction processes and the accomplishment of leadership, rather than, for instance, focusing on the qualities of the individuals participating in the interaction (Raelin, 2016; Yukl, 2013), nor are the internal mental processes of relevance (Fairhurst, 2007). In other words, studies within this strand do not treat leadership as something one person does, or as something that one person does to others, but rather as something that occurs in between people (Larsson, 2017). Using CA, Arvedsen and Hassert (2020) illustrated that one team member influenced the rest of the team by producing a formulation about future actions. Through a fine-grained analysis, Larsson and Lundholm (2013) illustrated that the establishment of a task-based collective identity was one of the primary organizing functions of leadership. Van de Mieroop et al. (2020) analyzed naturally occurring interactions to illustrate how shared leadership was achieved as a situated social practice.
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When zooming in on a specific interaction, interlocutors orient towards actions carried out in the situation and organize their next action based on this (Llewellyn and Hindmarsh, 2010;
Schegloff, 2007b). Epistemics, deontics, and emotional aspects represent means for analytically addressing interaction because they “are deployed as resources of action recognition—similarly to those resources accessible to bare senses: speech, bodily behavior, material artifacts, and so on” (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2014: 187). Of particular relevance for this study is deontic authority, which refers to the right to announce, propose, and decide (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2012). By drawing on deontic authority in the analysis of leadership, studies can analytically illustrate the rights and obligations that the influencer situationally draws upon relating to the specific role they have been assigned with. Clifton’s (2019) case study of leadership in
interaction illustrated how influencers, in the extracts analyzed, drew on deontic authority and how the influenced oriented towards this authority. Svennevig (2011) also applied deontic modality as he illustrated the situated practice of enacting leader identity, while Van de Mieroop (2020) used deontic status and stance to analytically illustrate the rights and obligations the influencer situationally mobilized in relation to his or her role as appointed chair.
The leadership process can be analytically approached through the concepts deontic status and deontic stance (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2014), both of which are closely related to deontic authority. Deontic status relates to the relative position of power and authority, while deontic stance relates to public ways of displaying authority or power in relation to others. As Van de Mieroop (2020: 597) indicates, this distinction is relevant, because it “links up with the tension between the pre-discursive organizational structure and the positions that people hold in this structure on the one hand, and the way the actual interaction unfolds”. This is supported by Meschitti (2019), who argues that people can position themselves and gain power independent of institutional structures. As such, the notions of deontic authority, stance, and status are a way to separate the formal rights and obligations from the hierarchical leader and relate them to a specific role, such as that of chair. If a subordinate is appointed meeting chair, certain rights and obligations follow, and with those, certain expectations from other meeting participants
(Markaki and Mondada, 2012). These rights, obligations, and expectations can be analytically explained with the support of deontic status, stance, and authority.
Note that since I take an interactional relational perspective on leadership, deontic authority is not something one can be in possession of. Rather, based on a social relational perspective, both deontic status and stance are dependent on how the interlocutors receive the deontic claims. One
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can enact a deontic status. For example, by being a formal appointed leader, a person is morally assigned with certain rights and obligations that enables this person to enact certain behavior or carry out certain actions. However, in a leadership process, granting deontic status or stance any impact, calls for the follower(s) to recognizing the influencer’s influence attempt (DeRue and Ashford, 2010). Thus, as analyst, zooming in on the leadership process requires being able to identify both an attempt at influence, for example, through deontic claims and, subsequently, the individual(s) being influenced, by aligning with the deontic claim (also referred to as “next turn proof procedure“ within CA (Sacks et al., 1974: 728–729)). As such, the perspective of deontic authority makes it possible to explore how the rights and obligations that come with explicit local roles, such as that of chair, can enable subordinates to enact deontic authority.
Additionally, deontic authority can help shed light on what influence assigning explicit local roles to subordinates might have on the leadership process and, essentially, aid in gaining an improved understanding of the leadership configuration.
Leadership configuration and virtual collaboration
As noted by various scholars (Clifton, 2019; Larsson and Lundholm, 2013; Van De Mieroop et al., 2020), accomplishing leadership calls for a significant amount of interactional work, both embodied and vocally. In a virtual context, where collaboration is mediated via ICT, additional complexity is added to the interaction, both regarding asynchronous (Darics, 2020) and
synchronous collaboration (Heath et al., 2000). Within synchronous virtual collaboration, such as virtual meetings, interlocutors are limited by a lack of bodily cues, gaze, and minimal responses due to delays (Arminen et al., 2016; Oittinen, 2018). The virtual context is particularly interesting when looking into the leadership configuration as limited access to multimodal resources puts the possible challenges of the interaction at the forefront.
Accomplishing the leadership processes in a virtual context entails additional interactional work and engagement by all interlocutors (Arvedsen and Hassert, 2020), hence making the
interactional leadership work more accessible for analysis. The virtual context calls for a particularly formalized and structured organizing of interaction, which in previous literature is pointed to as a task for the formally appointed hierarchical leader (Holm and Fairhurst, 2018).
This sparked an interest concerning what happens when subordinates are assigned with an explicit local role, such as that of chair, within a virtual context. This study sheds light on the
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leadership process in a more nuanced way to allow a greater understanding of subordinates as both organized and structured influencers, as well as, emergent and unstructured. This leads to the following research question: How does assigning an explicit local role to a team member, such as that of chair, influence the leadership configuration in a virtual meeting?
Methodology
To understand leadership as a social phenomenon, ethnomethodology (EM) and CA represent relevant methodological approaches for this study. The former assumes that social order is an interactional accomplishment (Garfinkel, 1967; Hindmarsh and Llewellyn, 2010) in which talk in interaction is in focus to explore the accomplishment of intersubjectivity (Heritage and Clayman, 2010; Hindmarsh and Llewellyn, 2010), while the latter represents an analytical tradition established based on Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (Sacks, 1992; Sacks et al., 1974) and that is rooted in EM. CA can help demonstrate the complexity of social interaction by focusing on the accomplishment of social order through turn taking. This analytical focus can shed light on the sequential order interlocutors take and also on how this order contributes to accomplishing the work at hand (Schegloff, 2007b). In business meetings, this could be opening and closing the meeting (Nielsen, 2013), choosing who speaks next, and making decisions (Asmuß, 2015; Asmuß and Svennevig, 2009; Svennevig, 2012).
Besides leaning on the theoretical notion of deontic authority (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2014), which derives from CA, sequence organization is used to explore the systematics of who, how, and when people are expected to talk and how anomalies are handled in the situation, providing a systematic approach to seemingly arbitrary interactions and illustrating the close coordination of talk between speakers (Schegloff, 2007b). I also draw on membership categorization (Hester and Eglin, 1997), where categories are understood as framings for participants in which they can assign meaning to actors or events (Whittle et al., 2015).
This study is based on an open collection of naturally occurring video recorded data from 54 virtual team meetings that was collected to gain insight into virtual work collaboration. After watching the videos several times, a variety of interesting phenomena emerged. In particular, I was intrigued by the empirical phenomenon of team members chairing the meeting while the team manager also participated. After identifying and noting where this appeared in the data, I
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revisited the videos of meetings in which team members chaired part of or the entire meeting.
Going over the examples once again (13 meetings out of 54 meetings), I found that most of the time, the role of chair was enacted by what Angouri and Marra (2010) refer to as the index chair contribution (e.g., opening and closing, introducing items on the agenda, shifting between agenda items, orienting to turn allocation, and sanctioning inappropriate meeting conduct). In this process, I came across the two examples presented in this article, where the subordinates assigned with the explicit local role of chair seem to expand this role beyond merely enacting index chair contributions. I transcribed the selected data according to the Jeffersonian (2004) system and carried out a detailed data-driven analysis focusing on the principles of a single case analysis in accordance with Hutchby and Woofitt (2008). In particular, I focused on sequence organization, membership categories, and deontic authority, allowing me to relate my data-driven analysis to the social practice of leadership (Clifton, 2006, 2019) and address my research question.
Data
The extracts presented in this analysis are part of a larger dataset that was collected over a period of one year and three months (2017–2018) in eight teams from five different companies.
The study is primarily based on naturally occurring data in accordance with the conversational analytical approach (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 2008). The body of data comprises 56 hours of video and audio recordings, predominantly done on QuickTime, of virtual team meetings. To supplement and understand the teams’ structure, function, and organization, I carried out eight interviews lasting from 30 minutes to 2 hours with team managers and key players in the organizations. The extracts in this article derive from two different teams in two different companies, both headquartered in Denmark, and with team members across the globe. Details for each team will be presented in the analysis prior to each extract.
Analysis
The two extracts depict a small fraction of a business team meeting in which the team manager (formally appointed hierarchical leader) and the team members (subordinates) meet to catch up on current business. The extracts are of interest because the formally appointed hierarchical
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leader is present at the meeting but, prior to the meeting, this person appointed a subordinate the meeting chair. In particular, the two extracts distinguish themselves from one another in that the first one shows a subordinate, in the role of chair, single-handedly influencing a peer. In the second extract, a subordinate enacts the role of chair, and in collaboration with peers, exerts influence towards other peers and the formally appointed hierarchical leader. In other words, two different leadership configurations occur but both emanate from a subordinate appointed as chair. I will use both extracts to illustrate how subordinates appointed as meeting chair mobilize their rights and obligations assigned to them as chairs to engage as influencers in the leadership process. As such, the extracts can depict how leadership is configured without a priori assuming that the influencer is the formally appointed hierarchical leader, nor does leadership emerge organically and unstructured. I instead illustrate how separating the role of chair from the formally appointed hierarchical leader permits a detailed study of how leadership is configured based on roles mobilized within the situation rather than on a priori assuming that leadership is inherently part of a position, i.e. with the formally appointed hierarchical leader.
Extract 1): Subordinate acting as chair, influencing a peer
This extract is from a Skype for Business team meeting between a group located at the
headquarters (n=9) of an international oil and gas company, who provides support for a group of team of managers (n=7) located remotely worldwide (indicated by “rem” in the transcript).
Figure 5: Seating plan of the virtual team in an international oil and gas company
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Although cameras are an option, no one has turned theirs on. The meeting’s purpose is to share information. Jasper (JAS), the team member who is assigned the role of chair at their monthly team meeting, is located at the company’s headquarters. Right before this extract begins, Jasper presented the last month’s financial results for each of the remote units. As Jasper finishes, a team member, Rick (RIC), who is located remotely, asks if it is time to make comments. Jasper, as chair, grants permission to make comments. Due to space limitation, 15 lines of Rick’s monologue have been omitted. In the extract below, Rick presents what he refers to as a hot potato, explaining that he has a local buyer who can ensure a discount compared to the price he normally pays when he adheres to the key performance indicators and uses the company’s regulated system, called k mat. This sparks a comment from Jasper.
Extract 1
1 RICrem: the second? is (.) i want to bring the: eh (.)the maybe a hot 2 potato at least for the scotsman or for UK here is the k mat
3 (1.0)
4 and (0.6) i have a very very good buyer here who kno:ws the 5 local market? and the savings he can s- show to us on a weekly 6 basis? (.) are tremendous (0.7) and we are balancing? between 7 (1.0) buying locally.
8 (1.7)
9 eh::m
10 (0.6)
11 and and obviously following k mat and the k p i and i i really
12 ↑dont ↓know where to swing anymore i mean (0.7) i can
13 understand that the k mat has impact on the company but i 14 dont ↑think that this much is how much we can save here 15 locally?
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>> 15 lines omitted <<
16 and eh:: (0.5) i think half of that we could have got (0.3) 30%
17 cheaper? (0.3) on average? (0.3) if we buy locally ⌈( )⌉
18 JAS: ⌊(i mean)⌋
19 whats the (.) i- i mean i understand? where you are coming
20 ↓from but just ↑one comment at least we are not doing this just
21 to follow a k p i? (.) i mean the k mat is not just a k p i
22 ↓thing (0.3) this is to:: (.) to to ↑look at the company as you
23 know and see if we could do things smarter ↓and ↑easier (0.2) 24 and be cost and be cost conscious at the same time so
25 (0.5)
26 just so ↑thats said at least this is ↑not just a k p i exercise
27 (0.7)
28 RICrem :no i ↑know its not but im k p i is kind of the output that
29 we have here. in terms of what we ↑need to follow i just try to 30 ↑simplify? the conversation >i i i< can understand the k mat 31 big picture its ↑just
32 (1.1)
33 sometimes. it doesnt add ↑up when you put the numbers together.
The analysis of this extract will look at how Jasper, as chair, following Rick’s presentation of the situation, mobilizes his rights and obligation to influence Rick’s understanding of the situation. In the extract, Rick presents his problem report, describing it as a hot potato. This is a
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“pre” sequence (Schegloff, 2007b) that indicates that something that might have a high level of interpersonal sensitivity is about to occur. He then introduces “the scotsman ” (l. 2), a
membership category that provides a way of giving meaning to actors or events (Whittle et al., 2015) and that attributes this category with the characteristic “UK” (l. 2) and “local” (l. 5), not to mention the validity of “a very very good buyer here who knows the local market” (l. 4). The Scotsman is a membership category (Antaki and Widdicombe, 2008) that can provide
“tremendous” savings (ll. 5-6). In l. 11 Rick introduces “the k mat” as a contrast to “the
scotsman”. Membership in the k mat category represents “the company” (l. 13) and means that
“the k p i” must be adhered to (l. 11). The contrast lies in how disregarding the membership category k mat (and thus company regulations) results in a 30% cost reduction. Because Rick introduces the problem at this team meeting, he is deferring a moral obligation (Stevanovic, 2018) on the team, or at least someone on the team, to find a solution to the problem.
Jasper takes it upon himself to respond to this moral obligation induced by Rick, initially by mobilizing the rights and obligations of the chair. Jasper self-selects the turn (l. 18) (Schegloff, 2007b) to answer Rick in ll. 18-27. By self-selecting his turn, Jasper displays deontic status (Stevanovic and Peräkylä, 2014). The process of self-selection in the virtual space can be more complicated due to limited multimodal cues, such as gaze and body gestures (Arminen et al., 2016; Mondada, 2013; Oittinen, 2018). As appointed chair, Jasper has the explicit right and responsibility to manage interaction among the participants (Svennevig, 2012) and, as such, Jasper can be reasonably understood as orienting towards an obligation that needs to be fulfilled (Stevanovic, 2018). Further, Jasper produces his self-selection through an overlap (l. 18)
(Schegloff, 2000), signaling a certain sense of urgency on his part to provide input on Rick’s comment, based on knowledge that Jasper is in possession of (Heritage, 2012).
Jasper then engages in the influence process in the sense that he reformulates the categories that Rick presented. Jasper initiates his response to Rick with a self-repair and restarts, followed by markers of joint understanding (Schegloff, 2007b) in which he states that he understands Rick’s position (l. 19). He then follows with a change-of-state-token (“but”, l. 20) (Heritage, 1984a), demonstrating that he will provide a dispreferred answer (Schegloff, 2007b). Jasper states that
“we” are not “just” following a KPI (ll. 20-21), “we” are using the k mat to “do things smarter and easier” (l. 23), and “to be cost conscious at the same time” (l. 24). Jasper introduces the inclusive first-person plural pronoun “we”, which could reasonably be heard as including the entire organization as Jasper also refers to “the company” in l. 22. As such, Jasper could be